OCU considers the Government’s proposals on renting apartments insufficient

Organization of consumers and users (FATHER) see suggestions from Law on housing announced the Government and therefore seeks the executive power of Pedro Sánchez “urgent and more ambitious” measures in this environment.

OCU welcomes the award announcement 50,000 homes from Sareb to social rentbut he thinks he is late and that the number of them insufficientsince the public fund of social housing for rent is about 290,000 properties (180,000 from autonomous communities and 110,000 from city halls and dependent entities).

These figures, as he explains, are from the Special Social Housing Bulletin published by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda in 2019, and since then – he claims – “it has barely grown”.

They may seem like many homes – says OCU – but It covers only 1.6% of Spanish households and it is very far from the European average which reaches 9.3%.

The organization believes that the Management Board they should multiply by five the public housing stock for rent promoting its construction by giving public land in concession or by acquiring vacant and unoccupied houses.

Another option for OCU, even if temporary, would be an allotment direct rental assistance for those who need it the most.

Consumers believe that the government’s proposed rent cap may serve to stabilize prices in the short term, but on the other hand it also forces rental homeowners to bear most of the cost of the lack of access to affordable housing.

Moreover, in the medium term “can have the opposite effect”because in his opinion “the lack of legal certainty will cause the supply to continue to decrease, and the prices will not reach the equilibrium point, which may return to the chronification of the rent shortage, as happened in the past decades”.

Because of all this, he asks the Government for a “broad and open” discussion on the future Housing Act before its adoption, in which social organizations, consumers and owners participate.